BAGHDAD: — U.S. Marines have arrested four Iraqi men in connection with the kidnapping of an American journalist, Jill Carroll, who was freed last March after 82 days in captivity, a military spokesman said Wednesday.

The spokesman, Major General William Caldwell, said the four men were arrested in the Sunni Arab-dominated region west of Baghdad. He declined to identify them or say when they were arrested. According to The Associated Press, however, another U.S. official, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, said the arrests were made a month ago.

At the time of her abduction, Carroll was a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor and was traveling without security guards. She was held in outside Habaniya, just west of Falluja in Anbar Province, before being freed on March 30. She was released near a Sunni Arab political party office in Baghdad.

Carroll was abducted on Jan. 7 as she traveled to an interview with a Sunni Arab politician in western Baghdad. The kidnappers killed her Iraqi interpreter.

Caldwell said the four captives included a member of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella group comprising Sunni insurgent groups linked to Al Qaeda.

The four were arrested in a series of raids in western Iraq, beginning at a two-story brick house outside of Habbaniya, which is near Falluja.

A Marine lieutenant perusing intelligence reports noticed that they identified green metal window bars and a driveway gate that marines had spotted in patrols in the region, Caldwell said. Marines asked to search the house, he said, and found items inside, including a bookshelf in an upstairs bedroom that matched descriptions of a home where Carroll was kept.

Marines arrested the house's owner, and information he gave to military interrogators led marines to three other houses, in an eastward direction toward Baghdad, Caldwell said. They arrested the Shura Council member after searching the second house, he said.

During a search of the third house, north of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division freed two hostages and arrested three more people.

Information from those people led to the fourth house, on the west side of Baghdad, where officials now believe Carroll was also held during her abduction, Caldwell said.

He praised the marines who read the intelligence reports and matched details in them to those they noticed while on the streets of dangerous cities like Falluja.

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Caldwell also said Wednesday that a Black Hawk helicopter from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing crashed Tuesday in Anbar Province with soldiers on board during an "area familiarization" flight. The cause of the crash, he said, was mechanical, with no hostile fire involved.

The Black Hawk crashed in water, upside down, he said. Divers were still searching for two missing crew members, he said, and the remaining four were in stable condition.

In Baghdad on Wednesday, gunmen killed a fish vendor and four customers in a drive-by shooting near a gas station in Al-Dawoodi in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.

Six bodies of people were found Wednesday in different areas in Baghdad, the official said.

Ali Adeeb and Qais Mizher contributed reporting for this article.

Hearing in killings ending

A U.S. military hearing to determine whether to court-martial a group of soldiers for the rape and murder of a teenage Iraqi girl and the killing of her family was set to wrap up proceedings Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported from Baghdad.

The soldiers accused in the case - Specialist James Barker, Sergeant Paul Cortez and Privates Bryan Howard and Jesse Spielman - have been accused of taking varying roles in the killings in a town south of Baghdad on March 12.

Private Steven Green, described by the defense as the ringleader, has been charged with rape and murder and will stand trial in a civilian court in Kentucky.

Green, who was discharged from the army because of what was called a "personality disorder," has pleaded not guilty.